Primarily a collection of news links about all 10 Horizon League teams on a daily basis, culled from online newspapers, school athletic websites, the conference website, and school newspapers, plus some other content from time to time.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Race for the 1 seed

The 1 seed came into fairly sharp focus after last night, though there's one pesky scenario which cannot be resolved now because it depends on RPI. My next entry will concentrate on the race for the 2 seed.

Milwaukee beat UIC and WSU hung on to defeat CSU tonight, leaving us with these standings with 8 league games left:

The number of scenarios has been reduced to 256, and of those, 232 give Valpo the 1 seed. In fact, Valpo has clinched a double-bye, and the other 24 scenarios give Detroit the 1 seed, so after the first round, the tourney will be held either at the ARC or at Calihan Hall.

Detroit can secure the 1 seed if they beat Loyola and UIC and Valpo loses to YSU and GB, or if all of the following things happen:

Detroit swept YSU and split with WSU. Valpo swept WSU but would be swept by YSU. GB swept YSU but was swept by WSU.

If Valpo wins 13, they win the regular season title outright. If they go 12-4, they still get the 1 seed, with one exception. There are 32 scenarios that in which both Detroit and Valpo go 12-4 (no one else can reach 12 wins). Half of them have Valpo beating GB, the other half have Valpo beating YSU.

If Valpo beats YSU, GB becomes neutral because both Valpo and Detroit will have split with them, but YSU can't win 9, so WSU is free to break the tie in Valpo's favor.

If Valpo beats GB, both WSU and GB are favorable tiebreakers for the Crusaders. The only hope Detroit has here is if GB and WSU end up 9-7 along with YSU. However, even then Valpo would be 4-2 (2-0 vs. WSU, 2-0 vs. GB, 0-2 vs. YSU). Detroit would have the same record (1-1 vs. WSU, 1-1 vs. GB, 2-0 vs. YSU), so we have to go to 6th place, which is UIC. Both teams swept the Flames, so we go to 7th place.

If CSU beats Loyola, they finish 6-10 while Loyola finishes 4-12. Valpo swept the Vikings while Detroit split with them.

Now for the exception: if Loyola beats CSU, they both finish 5-11. Both teams would be 3-1 against CSU/Loyola with Valpo splitting with the Ramblers while Detroit split with CSU. That only leaves UWM, and both Valpo and Detroit swept the Panthers.

Hence, in 1 out of 32 such scenarios, we have to consult RPI to resolve the tie. Currently, Detroit leads in this department.